Visual Perl for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET

Overview

I normally develop Perl applications in Linux, but a recent project required a Windows environment. I figured ActiveState would be a good starting place. The company develops tools for programmers and has been a strong supporter of Perl on the Windows platform. They had recently released Visual Perl, a plug-in for Microsoft Studio .NET. Now before I talk more about Visual Studio, you have to understand that I've never used an Integrated Development Environment before now; mainly because they tend to get in the way of, well programming.

You might be wondering what ActiveState Visual Perl has to do with Microsoft Visual Studio. Sure, Visual Studio supports all the Microsoft languages plus HTML, but Perl? Well, apparently, Microsoft has made it possible for 3rd party vendors to integrate other languages into the tool. And ActiveState has done that so well that you would never know that it wasn't part of Visual Studio .NET out of the box.

I'll admit that I was a bit pessimistic that a Perl add-on to another product would turn out to be any good. Actually, I  was pessimistic that there would ever be a tool better than notepad or WinVi for Windows. Boy was I surprised. For the most part, Visual Perl provides the same features in Visual Studio that you have for built-in languages like C# and VB.NET. If you've used Visual Studio .Net, that saying a lot, because the tool is possibly the most comprehensive development tool ever developed.

Installing Visual Perl

The first step in installing Visual Perl is to install Visual Studio .NET. I installed the beta version that came with a magazine that I subscribe to. By the time you read this, the first full release of the product will be available for purchase. One thing to note though: It's a real memory and disk hog. The installation took over 1 gigabyte of space on my hard disk and usually slurps up over 100 megabytes of memory. What it requires in resources it makes up for in functionality though.

Next, make sure you have a recent version of ActivePerl installed on your box. If you don't, you can download it for free at http://www.activestate.com.

Once Visual Studio and ActivePerl are installed, you'll want to head over to the download page for Visual Perl on the ActiveState Web site. If you aren't running Windows 2000 or XP, there are some additional requirements for installation, which are outlined on the download page.

When you register Visual Perl, you will be sent a trial license via email. Once the license has expired, you will be required to purchase a license from ActiveState. The cost at the time this article was written was $295 per copy.

Features

Let's take a look at some of the useful features that come with Visual Perl. I've included a Screen Shot so that you can get a better feel for how these features look. In brief, Visual Perl includes the following features:

• Code Editor
• Graphical Debugger
• Regular Expression Toolkit
• Class Browser
• Project Manager
• Perl Dev Kit integration
• Source Code Control

One of the biggest things I appreciate is the ability to edit HTML, ASP, XML, or any Microsoft language (C++, VB, C#)  in additional to Perl. This may be moot if you're strictly a Perl and/or C programmer, but Visual Studio will shine in most modern computing environments that contain a mixture of languages and technologies.

Another handy feature is the ability to bookmark places in a file and navigate between them. This is useful when you are debugging a problem in multiple parts of the code. If you have a large number of things to do in the code, you can assign bookmarks to the tasks list. Double-clicking the task opens the associated file and takes you directly to the bookmark. That's right, there's a task list for those of us who have a a lot of bugs to fix or those that just like to stay organized. This feature also comes in handy when working on a team. Other programmers can open the project and split up the tasks and use the bookmarks to find important places in the code. 

Visual Perl for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
Visual Perl for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET - Part 2